The Hunters Series Box Set

by Glenn Trust

  “Done?” The confusion in the conspirator’s alcohol soaked brain was evident in his wavering voice.

  “What?” The voice sounded puzzled at the question.

  “Done. You said done. Does that mean…”

  The voice cut in. “Done. You know what that means. What are you doing?”

  “Well, I was just…”

  The phone went dead. The voice was gone.

  Sitting in a padded chair on his deck in the twilight of an early spring evening, a trembling hand held the cell phone against his ear for a full minute after the voice had ended the call. A whippoorwill calling in the woods behind his house roused him, and he put the phone on the table again.

  The voice of Robert ‘Big Bud’ Thompson, had sounded annoyed and vaguely threatening when the man receiving the call had broken the agreed upon protocol and said more than the agreed upon ’right’. Big Bud Thompson had been his contribution to the plan that had evolved from the discussions and conversations with his collaborators.

  The discussions had taken place over a number of months, each member of the group feeling the others out until all felt safe that everyone was equally committed to the plan and to seeing it through. At some point in the conversations, James had become aware that he was committed whether he wanted to be or not.

  This was the deep water, and those swimming with him were sharks. He had become dimly aware as time went by that he would have to become one of them, a shark, or he would be consumed by them. In the end, he was a very weak shark, toothless almost. But Bud Thompson was his trump card.

  The plan the group had conceived had a drawback. It required serious sacrifices from all members, regardless of money, position, party or political persuasion. It was not clear that everyone was willing to make the required sacrifices. It was in resolving one of these required sacrifices that he had been able to gain entry into the inner sanctum of the group by offering Thompson’s services

  Big Bud was a family hanger-on. He had been a boy running errands for the grandfather and had grown up with the father of the conspirator. Despite his contact with their respectable family, he lived on the fringes of the law. Known to associate with the rougher side of the county, it was rumored that he had been involved with the ‘Dixie Mafia’ and that he had the ability to get dirty jobs done if necessary.

  James knew Big Bud as an associate of his father’s. He did odd jobs and went on various and sundry “errands” of an undisclosed nature for his father. As a young man, while not highly motivated, he was observant. He noticed over time that his father’s uncanny ability to close uncertain real estate transactions always seemed to coincide with visits from Big Bud Thompson and the errands he performed for his father.

  And so, when the opportunity to gain entry into the inner circle of the group presented itself, the weak link in the conspiracy had offered up the services of Big Bud Thompson. He would have done well to check with Big Bud first. The ensuing conversation with him had not gone well. While Thompson was accustomed to working with and providing his special services to the senior men in the family, he had never considered the son to be more than a shiftless, spoiled boy.

  Overcoming Thompson’s doubts about his connections to the group, he had to introduce him to other members of the hands-on team that would be doing the dirty work. These were not the collaborators in the offices. These were the doers, the fixers, who had been brought into the plan to do the unpleasant work that would be required. The planners could never be associated with this unpleasantness.

  Thompson had recognized immediately that, despite his sponsor’s involvement, the others were serious men. He also recognized that the payoff would be significantly more than anything he had ever received while providing his services to the father and grandfather. After meeting the others, he had entered the circle of hands-on men willingly and had accepted his special assignment.

  Despite his introduction into the group by the son of his main client, Big Bud, like everyone else in the group, considered the man’s weakness a threat to everyone involved. It was commonly discussed amongst the hands-on team that he would cave like a house of cards if he were ever questioned by the law.

  Stanton James, the weak link, lifted the glass of scotch to his lips and took a shaky sip. He had two calls to make. After downing the glass of whiskey, he felt composed enough, or at least sedated enough, to make the calls.

  Taking the cell phone from the table with a shaking hand, he fumbled through the contact list until he found the first number. It was the number of the man who had sat behind the desk in the office on the square that afternoon. He managed to punch the green dial button. The phone rang twice.

  “Yes.”

  Swallowing hard he said, “Done.”

  “Right.” The phone went dead as agreed upon by all the members of the group when discussing the protocols of communication of the day’s events. It was the protocol that he had not been able to keep when answering the call from Big Bud Thompson.

  He managed to find the second number in the phone’s contact list. Despite the alcohol encroaching on his already limited emotional capacities, he punched the dial button.

  On his patio in an Atlanta neighborhood, Edward Paschal, son of Haitian immigrants and restaurant entrepreneur, let the phone ring twice and then answered.

  “Yes?”

  There was a pause before the shaky voice muttered, “Done.”

  “Right” He ended the call. He had his own call to make now, to his sponsor, who had been on the phone with them in the office. As he brought the number up on his phone, he felt some small sense of satisfaction and vindication for the sacrifice of Clayton Marswell. They were all in now. All committed. There was no turning back.

  Stanton James, the weak link of the conspiracy, sat slumped in his chair on his back deck staring across the yard. Early evening stars were just beginning to twinkle in the not quite black twilight sky. He was oblivious. The dark back yard was a black void that seemed to engulf and swallow him. He had entered into a world and a work for which he was ill equipped. The alcohol could not dim that awareness nor kill the pit of fear that was building in his gut.

  11. Bittersweet

  “What?”

  “PT, your father, he’s been killed.” Lauralee Somerhill struggled to maintain her control.

  “Mother, what are you saying?” Prentiss Terrence Somerhill, Jr., PT to the family, squinted as he listened to his mother’s stricken voice. His wife Lisa, seated on the sofa in their family room, looked up at her husband standing rock still in the center of the room, the cell phone pressed tightly to his ear, staring across the room and out the window into the yard.

  “Your father has been killed, PT.”

  “But how? Why?”

  “He was shot, sitting on the back porch. I don’t know why.”

  “Have you called…?”

  “Yes, yes. I called the police. They’re on the way. PT, just come over. Don’t bring the children tonight. Just come over now. I’m alone here.”

  “I’m on the way, Mother.” He pressed the disconnect button, shoved the phone in his shirt pocket and moved briskly across the large room.

  “PT, what’s the matter?”

  Turning to his wife on the sofa, he said quietly, “Dad’s been killed, shot, Mother said.”

  “What? How can that be? We are going to take the children over this evening.” The disbelief on her face absorbed the shock and then contorted her face into anguished pain. Lisa Somerhill loved her father in law. He doted on her and his grandchildren and was as much a father to her in many ways as her own.

  PT stood looking down at her in the center of the room. For a moment, she thought he would sit down and comfort her, but a sudden look of duty and determination came over his countenance. It was a look she was well familiar with, the look of a big day in court or a nasty negotiation. He said only, “I have to go.”

  He walked from the room through the house to the garage and his car. A minute later, he
was steering the Escalade out of the drive and down the street. As he waited for a car to pass at the stop sign at the end of the street, the phone in his shirt pocket vibrated.

  “Yes.”

  “Done.” The voice waivered uncertainly. He seemed about to say more.

  PT Somerhill did not give him the chance. He gave the agreed upon reply, “Right,” then disconnected. There was no need to tell James that he had already received the news from his mother.

  Steering the Escalade with one hand, he looked down and found the number in the contact list on his phone. Punching the dial button with his thumb, he waited while the phone rang twice.

  “Yes.” The deep, confident voice resonated in the cell phone’s small receiver.

  “Done.” Calmly, PT gave the agreed upon signal and said no more.

  “Right.” The word came lilting, pleasantly, almost melodically over the phone. And then, the voice continued unexpectedly. “A moment if you please.”

  “But…the protocol…”

  “I know we all agreed, but I’m the last call in the sequence, am I not.”

  “You are,” PT replied, and then the lawyer in him qualified his response by adding, “As far as I know.”

  The voice gave a rumbling, deep chuckle over the phone. It vibrated through the phone into his ear. “Very good, Counselor. As far as you know, very good.” He paused, allowing the solemnity to return to the moment at hand. “This must be,” another pause, “bittersweet for you.”

  “It’s hard. I won’t deny it.”

  “That’s why I wanted to say a word to you. You are, after all, my protégé, are you not?”

  “If you say so.” Somerhill was becoming annoyed at the condescension.

  “I do say so. And, I want to assure you that as bitter as the loss of your father is, the rewards will be sweeter than you can imagine. You must see this through with us.”

  “When have I ever given you reason to doubt?” The tone in PT’s voice showed that he was now clearly annoyed.

  “Never.” The deep voice remained calm. “But at a moment like this, I thought it might help to have an encouraging word from a friend, from me. There is much in store for you. The loss of your father was an unfortunate, but necessary sacrifice. He had become swayed and deluded. He would have changed all that we have worked to accomplish. There would be no guarantees. You know that.” There was a pause to allow all of this to sink in.

  “I know all of this,” PT responded, swallowing down the annoyance. “We have discussed this many times, so why now, again?”

  “Because, as I said, at a moment like this, a word from a friend is important. You know that you are being groomed. There is a place with infinitely more power and opportunity awaiting you. I wanted to assure you that the bitterness of this moment will pass.”

  “I know that.”

  “Good. That’s good. Now tell me where you are.”

  “Driving to my mother’s house. She found my father. Called the police.”

  Again, the voice responded calmly, even sympathetically, “Good. Very good. Take care of your mother. See to the needs of your family. We will talk more.”

  The phone went dead and PT replaced it in his shirt pocket. Driving the remaining twelve miles to his parents’ house, he tried to wipe his conscience clean. The sting from the sacrifice of his father was indeed bitter. He forced it from his mind with thoughts about the sweet rewards that had been promised.

  To his surprise, the bitterness of the moment began to dissipate. He wondered what that said about him. With a little more effort, he was able to push thoughts of his father far away, and he no longer wondered about his own failings. By the time he reached his mother, he was focused on the mission and the plan. He would see it through.

  12. Complications

  Walking briskly from the rented SUV, the tall man entered the Jacksonville airport terminal. The E-ticket printed the night before from a hotel business center computer was folded neatly in the breast pocket of his tan wool sports jacket. There were actually three of them. One would take him from Jacksonville to Mobile. The second would take him from Mobile to Saint Louis. The third would return him to Atlanta, his base of operations.

  The three flights home were intended to make it difficult to track his movements. Rodney Puckett was a careful man. His line of work required him to be so. One of the men on the phone in the distant city, the one with the deep voice, and he had grown up in the same rural Georgia county. As youths and young men, they had moved in the same circles, worked the same menial jobs, and struggled to extricate themselves from the crushing poverty of their youth. They had been friends.

  One friend had found his way to law school, thanks mostly to the encouragement of the owner of the construction company where he dug ditches and carried lumber while in high school. The owner of the company took the young man under his wing and urged him to strive for something more. You can be anything you want. And the young man did, putting himself through law school and eventually working his way into a successful practice that had brought him rewards beyond his earlier imaginings.

  His friend, Rodney Puckett, had followed a different path. Falling in with a couple of his construction co-workers, Puckett had started using drugs, marijuana mostly, and had then migrated to selling to other friends and co-workers, establishing himself as a consistent, although small-time, dealer for his suppliers. These contacts had led him into doing various “odd jobs” for his suppliers and others.

  Eventually, young Rodney had established himself as a man who could get things done, for a price. And the price his employers were willing to pay was high enough to change his life. Moving to Atlanta, he bought an expensive condominium in the Buckhead area and lived the life of a southern gentleman of substantial means. The source of the funds that sustained his lifestyle was uncertain, but it was generally believed by his legitimate acquaintances that he had inherited his wealth.

  Despite his success and rise in the Georgia underworld, Puckett had maintained his ties with his friend who had risen similarly in his own legal realm of influence. His friend, careful not to jeopardize his own rise and success, welcomed the ongoing relationship with his boyhood companion. By unspoken mutual agreement, they stayed at arm’s length in the public view. But the relationship and friendship remained. Rodney Puckett was a useful person to know, and the ‘Counselor’ knew that it was best to have him as a friend. Counselor was the term that Puckett used when referring to his friend in the presence of others. Names were seldom, if ever, used in their relationship.

  Having passed through security, Puckett stretched out on an isolated seat at an empty departure gate, near the gate for his own flight to Mobile. The cell phone resting on his knee vibrated.

  “Yes,” he said answering.

  “Done.”

  “Right” Puckett disconnected and placed the phone on his knee again.

  A small smile curved across his face. The Atlanta team had completed their assignment. The caller, Simon “Sim” Lee, had been the team leader and had orchestrated the carjacking and abduction of Judge Clayton Marswell. Terrell Perkins, the second carjacker, was new to the group and trying to earn his entry into their society. He had gladly accepted the role of the triggerman firing the bullet through the brain of Judge Marswell. With that act, he had been promised full membership, and rewards, in future assignments organized by Puckett. The third member of the “Marswell Team,” Bill Quince, was Lee’s partner and had driven the truck. Quince was solid and reliable, if not very bright. While he could not be trusted with Lee’s role as the team leader, he would faithfully get his job done and see things through to the end without deviation. Lee’s call assured Puckett that all three were safely in Quince’s truck and across the Tennessee line. They would not stop until they reached Bowling Green, Kentucky where they would pick a budget motel at random and spend the night.

  Puckett sat patiently waiting for the second call, contemplating the success of the team in Atlanta and his own
elimination of young Timmy Farrin jogging along a back road in Pickham County. The Counselor and the others would be pleased. Their success might well earn him and the team members a bonus. Puckett knew that his friend was a generous man when greeted with success.

  A few minutes later, the phone on his knee vibrated again.

  “Yes.”

  “Finished.”

  Puckett’s brow furrowed slightly at the signal that there may be a problem. It had been prearranged. If the job was completed but there were complications, ‘finished’ was to be the signal word instead of ‘done’.

  “Meet me tomorrow.”

  Both phones disconnected simultaneously. Puckett would not break protocol and discuss the issue on the phone with Big Bud Thompson. The location of their meeting, should there be a problem, had been prearranged. At any rate, he thought he knew what the complication might be.

  Thompson was new to Puckett and the others, but had fit in immediately, winning as much trust as those who lived in the dark shadows of the criminal underworld were willing to give. He had worked his way up through the underside of society in much the same way Puckett had. Like Puckett, he was a career ‘handyman’, able to get unpleasant things done. The mutual respect between them was immediate, especially as Thompson recognized Puckett’s role as the team leader and link to the true power, the Counselor and his collaborators.

  They had frankly discussed the things that could go wrong with their plan. Thompson’s role was crucial. The team of conspirators had been adamant about the elimination of Prentiss Somerhill, although the reasons were not clear to Puckett and his team. Somehow, the murder of Somerhill was crucial to the success of the plan.

  What they did know, and what they had discussed, was that the weak link in the plan was the person who had introduced Big Bud to the group, his mentor so to speak. Having accepted the overtures and invitation into the group, Thompson had quickly realized that his sponsor was the weakest part of the plan and the group. That weakness was a serious threat to all. In the world that Puckett and Thompson inhabited, weakness was not just to be avoided. It was to be eliminated when necessary.